2010-06-30
A magical weekend at Bochum in Germany
Our association at the wold's biggest Pontian dance festival. For 29 years our european federation has arranged the annual Pontian dance festival for youths and so did it do this year again. The festival city was Bochum in Germany and our association participated with our biggest dance group ever. The weekend in the German city was a fun and exciting conclusion of the spring term before the needed summer break.

Our association planned this trip for several months and with the professional help of our sponsor travelhouse.se, we could realize our children's and teenager's will to participate in the world's biggest Pontian youth festival. The group that travelled to Germany consisted of 57 persons where 20 of them were our dancers from the small and middle groups.

Three days in Bochum Our journey started at Arlanda Airport on Friday June 4th with destination Düsseldorf where we were picked up by our chartered bus which took us to our hotel in Bochum. The whole day consisted of walks downtown and many coffee breaks in beautiful city center and the weather made our presence even better. On the evening, our participating board members attented the official reception of the federation where everyone was welcomed with food and drinks.

The festival day is always a jittery experience and consists exclusively discussions and preparations for the year's biggest event. The whole day went by preparing our dancers and in the afternoon we went to the Rührcongress, the hall where the festival was happening in. After all welcome speeches, the festival opened with 1,500 dancers from all Europe entering the hall dancing to the rythms of "empropis"... a beautiful spectacle that can't be described and must be experienced on sight. Our association's dance group appeared as number two and our children had a huge success who where accompanied by our friend and lyra player Antonis Nikiforidis.

The evening continued with 39 more appearances by different associations and finnished with an impressive show by 80 guys who danced in circle the ancient dance "serra". After that, the hall was transformed to a big party where everyone eat, drinked and danced to morning.

The way home isalways sad since it means that it's the end of a fun, exciting and eventful weekend. Sunday was filled with more walks in the city and more coffee in our unofficial meeting point at the local Starbucks.

What's most important is that our association once again participated in this big Pontian event and we gave our children the chance to experience something above the usual, something that we can't offer them in Sweden... to meet, hang out and exchange ideas with thousands of other Pontian children and teenagers from other European countries and bring our association closer to them. That was our main goal and we are happy that we succeeded to pass that on to our younger members.

At last but surely not least, we the board would like to thank all parents and members who participated this weekend and for their commitment and sacrifies they have done and are doing for our association... but on the other hand, we are all working for our children's sake.